Channeling Julia

When Africans were imported to work on large plantations as slaves they brought their native foods. Some of these food had already come to America by way of Mediterranean settlers, but slaves were widely used as cooks and they preferred to serve the foods they knew best. After the abolition of slavery these recipes lived on particularly in Creole cuisine.

This is fried okra rolled in corn meal and fried in cannola oil. Cut okra has a slimy feel that many dislike, but rolling the pieces in cornmeal takes advantage of the adhesive properties of the vegetable and makes it much more attractive. As a child, this is the only way I could be persuaded to eat okra.

Eggplant, okra, sorghum, black eyed peas, sesame seeds, one variety of rice and several varieties of melon made their way from Africa to the Americas. Today these foods are not only found in Southern kitchens but they're available in most supermarkets in the United States.

The Europeans brought pigs and chickens to North America.

They planted apple and pear trees and sowed wheat.

Black Eyed Peas - traditionally flavored with ham hocks. We left out the saturated fats, so ours have pieces of onion, tomato, garlic and Jalapeno pepper. It is traditional to serve black eyed peas on New Years Day for good luck in the coming year. This custom was actually brought to the Americas in 1730 by Sephardic Jewish immigrants who followed a Talmudic tradition.

During the Civil War, the Union troops participating in Sherman's March through the South considered corn and "field peas" only suitable for animal fodder. They were ignored when the troops stripped and burned local food supplies. As these were the only grains and protein left to the local inhabitants during the next few years, they became stigmatized as "hard times" foods.

Corn was the only grain available before settlers brought wheat and rice and it is the key to Southern Cooking.

True Southern Cornbread does not contain any wheat flour.

Flour was added to recipes as a social statement to make a smoother texture and a whiter bread to distinguish it from the coarser yellow stone ground cornmeal used by the poor.

Indian tribes in what is now the Southern United States had developed techniques and recipes based on local vegetation and food animals. Settlers adopted these as they learned how to consume the corn, squash, tomatoes, hot peppers, beans, pecans, peanuts, blackberries, raspberries and potatoes that already grew on the land.

Native game in the South includes raccoon, deer, rabbits, squirrels and opossum. Seafoods along the coast included shrimp, crawfish, crab, fish and oysters.

I grew up in mid-century mid-America. Memphis, Tennessee on the Mississippi River. My parents are from Mississippi and Arkansas. But I've lived in California the past three decades and think of food with a California "health conscious" attitude.

Southern fried chicken is probably the most widely known Southern food. Spread nationwide by fast food establishments of the "Colonel Sanders" variety, this has become a staple of American pop culture.

Our Southern style chicken was baked - not deep fried. Cut up chicken pieces were dipped in milk, then rolled in a mixture of cornmeal and spices. A small amount of olive oil coated the baking dish before the pieces were added. We lowered the calorie content from fat and used a "good" oil rather than the traditional lard.

Southern cooking is a fusion based on Native American cultures, with elements from Africa and Europe.

We use garlic in so many ways to enhance the flavors of other foods that its difficult to think of garlic as the primary flavor. How many times has someone said "too much garlic" when eating a dish?

So it's front and center for garlic ice cream - The Gilroy recipe. It's a favorite at the Gilroy Garlic Festival. The latter recipe served at the garlic festival isn't nearly as strong as the former. In 1978 the president of Gavilan College proposed the idea of a festival to the owner of the largest garlic farm in the Gilroy area. The first festival was held a year later and a documentary of that event "Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers" premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in 1980. (This is one of only 3 documentarys selected by the National Archive for permanent preservation in 2004)

We might also serve garlic tea, garlic cocktails or garlic beer.

For those who want the health benefits of garlic without the breath smell, garlic can be purchased in capsule form and taken like any vitamin. However, your skin may smell the next day from the byproducts. Several companies claim to have produced garlic essences that have no smell whatsoever - I've no idea how effective this may be.

My favorite garlic story today was at The Straight Dope where the lethality of garlic oil is discussed.